All Posts Tagged as 'Relationships'

Dear How to Do It,

My wife and I have been married 14 years and together for 17. We have a pretty strong relationship after a period of stagnation. With raising kids, both of our careers, and all the activities, we found ourselves drained. We have in the last few years refocused on us and our desires and our sex life, intimacy, and our togetherness has grown and reignited.

In this time, my wife has expressed her desire for a kinkier sex life. She kept it to herself all those years (thank you, religion!), her desire for light BDSM (blindfolds, being restrained), and also her desire to be filled and stretched by big dildos. We have explored this. I wasn’t really on board at first, but she was patient with me, and I’ve become accepting of participating and inviting in those things and ideas that give her pleasure. But when it turns back to me, I have one recurring fantasy and I am very reluctant to share it with her. Scared might be a better word. She has always been blessed with a gorgeous body that is beautiful, curvy, and full. I adore her. I adore and crave her body. But I I have this fantasy and curiosity of what it would be like to have sex with a woman who is thin. My wife’s weight limits what we do, position-wise, so she is comfortable. And I am on board with that. We do have fun. But I wonder and fantasize about what it would be like to be more athletic with a partner. To be able to lift her. Or have her on top of me light as a feather. We have had conversations along these lines relating to penis size. She craves the feeling a big dildo gives her, and I’m average. But the last thing I want to do is engage in any form of body shame with her. I love her body. I show her I love her and her body. I also am curious about smaller bodies. What would it be like? We are each other’s only partners.

Do you have any advice for how to explore this together with each other and in a way that is loving and caring for her while also honoring my fantasy? Or with the delicacy of body shame, am I best to keep this one tucked away? With the dildos, I have had to work through shame about my size. It was hard at first. It’s getting easier as we move forward. I see that she enjoys that feeling of the toy and also enjoys me. It isn’t one or the other. She reminds me that she likes what she likes—she likes both. Me and big dildos. I enjoy having sex with her. I’m just curious if there are any creative ways to explore this fantasy with her in a caring way. To be clear, I don’t want to open things up. This is not a backdoor plea to do that. We talked about nonmonogamy as an option for her large dildo/cock desire. She wanted to open up, and I did not. After playing with the toys and role-playing, we concluded monogamy is for us as the toys, plus my presence and care, satisfy her desire to feel full. She asks what I fantasize about and desire. If I’m being honest, this is it—sex with a different-shape body. But sharing this seems very precarious, and I do not want to hurt or shame her in any way.

—Thin Man

Dear How to Do It,

I’m a 34-year-old straight, male virgin. I don’t have any trouble talking to women, frequently match with attractive women on dating apps, and often get to first base. I’ve even gotten to the “finish line” a few times, even getting to fingering and cunnilingus, but between being so nervous I can’t get it up, putting my foot in my mouth, and pure terror, I’ve always screwed it up. My first time in bed with a woman (someone I’d just met at a party), at age 27, it was the nerves, but the five subsequent times, in my 30s, I guess I didn’t even know where to begin. In all but one case, I told them I was a virgin, and only once was this a specific issue for my partner. All of them were women I met on a dating app, on the second or third date, except one that I was in a two-month sort of relationship with.

I’ve noticed that I don’t find the vagina particularly sexy. Could this be an issue? I’m also uncircumcised (this is common in my part of the world), and part of me fears tearing off the foreskin.

I feel like I’m missing out on a key part of the human experience. Maybe being in love with my partner would help, but frankly I haven’t been in love in a good 10 years. Maybe I just need to be so consumed by lust that I can’t overthink it, but does that even happen? It’s even crossed my mind to visit a prostitute and get it over with, but then I think really couldn’t get it up—the thought of a partner who is likely not the least bit attracted to you is a massive turn-off to me. I’m interested in your thoughts. Thanks, and have a wonderful day.

—Frustrated

People often throw the phrase "obsessive-compulsive disorder" (OCD) around as jokey shorthand for being excessively particular or high-strung, casting the disorder as a sort of innocuous, yet desexualizing, set of anxieties.

But OCD isn’t a quirk. It's a mental health condition that more than 2 percent of people experience at some point. It takes the random thoughts that flash through people's heads—that irrational fear of having done something wrong, or an unbidden, bizarre fantasy—and, instead of allowing them to quickly fade, forces them to the forefront of their minds in distressing spirals. Because these obsessions don’t respond well to reason, people with OCD develop rituals in an attempt to bring themselves relief from those anxieties. But that relief is fleeting, and people get stuck in this cycle of obsession and ritual. Many become dependent on a growing list of compulsions, which can become their own sources of anxiety and shame.

Obsessions and rituals can bleed directly into sex, as well. People with contamination obsessions often talk about fixating on the perceived dirtiness of genitals or bodily fluids and putting up hard limits on how they have sex. By some estimates, at least one in 10 people with OCD will also at some point develop obsessions about sex, constantly questioning their sexualities or worrying they might be developing harmful urges and building rituals into their relationships, their masturbation habits, their engagement with porn, to test or reassure themselves about their desires. Fears of being misunderstood—or actually dangerous—force some people with sexual obsessions to avoid intimacy altogether. Often, current or potential romantic partners who face the realities of OCD write those with the condition off as just too much.

Dear How to Do It,

My boyfriend of just under a year, “Tom” is pansexual, which has never been a problem (I’m a straight woman, FYI). However, the night we met he told me that he had recently hooked up with a straight male friend, “Brandon,” and then been rejected, and this situation in particular is an issue. It is obvious that Tom has a huge crush on Brandon. Tom has said on a few occasions that he was ready to come out to his religious parents for Brandon and was hoping to be his boyfriend, but Brandon told him that the sex was a one-time thing and asked him not to tell anyone (a request which he obviously did not honor). Instead of backing off, Tom will text Brandon to join our group at any outing unless I expressly ask him not to by saying that I would like tonight to be just us, or that our friends have invited only us out. When Tom does invite Brandon places, Brandon often does not respond or responds hours later vaguely. Once, Tom said that he wanted to use my phone to call Brandon because he thought he’d actually get him to pick up by using a number not his own that Brandon didn’t recognize. If we pass a bar that Brandon is known to frequent regularly, Tom likes to stop in to see if he’s there, and will want to hang out if Brandon is there. He also repeatedly violates Brandon’s request to keep their hook up under wraps. He’s told many people, not just me. The one time he did get Brandon to hang out, Tom pissed me off by staying out hours after he told me he was coming back, letting his phone die so that I couldn’t reach him, and then waking me up at 3:30 in the morning to let him in because he didn’t have his keys. He’s also lately been floating the idea of Brandon joining us in a threesome, because I have expressed interest in us finding a male partner for one and wants me to spend one on one time with Brandon as a start to getting him home with us. At this point, I think I’m about ready to throw in the towel and let Tom chase this man and implode their friendship unencumbered by a relationship with me. What do you think?

—Brandon Blues

Q. My boyfriend is in a co-dependent relationship with his sister: My good friend “Mary” set me up with her brother “Jim” in January, when he moved in with her from out of state. We’ve been dating ever since. While Mary was happy for us, she was sad to not have a partner herself. So when Jim told me in March that he was going to prioritize her feelings because she was having a hard time, I understood. (By that time we were a “pod” of three, and being the third wheel can be rough.) Initially, their close sibling friendship seemed nice. But then Mary got possessive. She told me privately that they had fulfilled the emotional role of romantic partners for each other for years. She said she saw me as “the other woman.” At one point Mary asked Jim to stop texting me in the evenings so he could be more “present” when he was with her. Jim agreed that her behavior was unreasonable but said he didn’t want to change too much because Mary was struggling emotionally. Mary is in therapy and told me recently that we both need to stop making Jim “responsible” for our feelings. But I don’t think I have! I felt hurt and unsupported in the spring. I want to be compassionate toward Mary. But I suspect she and my boyfriend are co-dependent, and I want it to stop. What should I do? Or am I being selfish and I need to work on being empathetic toward my friend, who is lonely, and her brother, who is trying to support her?

TikTok has "shadow-banned" several hashtags relating to the LGBTQ+ community.

A report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute indicated that terms like "gay," "lesbian," and "transgender" were restricted in several languages for global users, "no matter where in the world they live."

"TikTok users posting videos with these hashtags are given the impression their posts are just as searchable as posts by other users, but in fact they aren’t. In practice, most of these hashtags are categorised in TikTok’s code in the same way that terrorist groups, illicit substances and swear words are treated on the platform. On some occasions, hashtags are categorised as non-existent, when in fact they’re tagged on videos across the platform.

For the first time since 2000, the official guidance on relationships and sex education (RSE) in England is changing. From this month, RSE is mandatory in every secondary school, regardless of whether they are state or private (though the Government has said it will make allowances for schools as yet unable to implement the change because of the coronavirus crisis).

Relationships education – which is now compulsory in every primary school – will mainly deal with families and friendships. It will cover the risks of online relationships, digital privacy, physical boundaries and recognising abusive behaviour.

But will the new guidance protect and empower young people for sex and relationships in a modern world?“The curriculum puts the physical health and emotional wellbeing of young people at its core,” Chiquita Henson, headteacher of Cirencester Deer Park School, a secondary school in Gloucestershire, tells i.